


A Crown Too Big For His Head

by ScrollingKingfisher



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Boy King Sam, Concerned Parent Gabriel, Gabriel (Supernatural) is Loki, Gen, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, Superhero Sam, Supervillain Gabriel, superhero au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-05
Updated: 2016-06-05
Packaged: 2018-07-12 09:55:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7097932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScrollingKingfisher/pseuds/ScrollingKingfisher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Superhero AU.</p>
<p>Sam Winchester is the Boy King- twelve years old and already trying to defend his city from the forces of evil, while also worrying about where the next meal is coming from and if he'll be able to study for his maths test. </p>
<p>Gabriel is Loki, the local super-villain who, despite the stupidity of apparently everyone else, knows exactly how wrong it is to force a child to play an adult's role in the most dangerous career path available. After he finds out exactly how young his latest opponent is, he reluctantly sets out to make life a little easier for him, preferably without blowing his own cover.</p>
<p>But when The Devil arrives, covers might be blown whether they like it or not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Crown Too Big For His Head

**Author's Note:**

> Based on a tumblr post I saw
> 
> http://whitmerule.tumblr.com/post/144628550560/fallingivy-okay-i-want-a-superhero-story-in
> 
>  
> 
> .

Sam Winchester was three days past his twelfth birthday when his superpowers manifested.

 

   It was very early for powers to develop, and very unexpected; one minute Azazel, a supervillain from out of town, was dangling a busfull of his screaming classmates over the river, laughing maniacally all the while. The next he was gaping in surprise as the bus lifted itself out of his hands and soared gracefully back to the bank, touching down gently on the road.

 

   No one else had noticed how calm Sam had been during the floating of the bus, or when Azazel got hit with a bolt of golden lightning afterwards that sent him running for the hills. But Sam had felt the energy streaming warm in his veins, and he knew what that meant. He had seen superheroes on TV and only last month they had done a presentation on them in class. So with solemn dignity he decided that it was time for him to step up to the plate and do his duty, even if he did have a maths test on Friday.

 

.o0o.

 

   The first time Gabriel saw Sam Winchester he was in his secret lair ( _not_ a bachelor pad, thank you), watching the news from the embrace of his favourite squashy couch.

 

   A blurry masked figure appeared on the screen, and Gabriel whooped with delight, kicking his socked feet up onto the plush footstool and swiping another handful of chocolate covered peanuts from the packet.

 

   “Look at that, Kryptonite! Fresh meat!”

 

   Kryptonite, being a small terrier, wagged his tail ecstatically at being addressed and leapt up into Gabriel’s lap, images of treats flooding his tiny doggy brain.

 

   “Oh no you don’t, you’ve already been fed this evening. Guess this means I’ll have to go all out, am I right? Give him a proper introduction to his new neighbours!”

 

   Gabriel rubbed the dog’s ears and let his mouth curl up into Loki’s most mischievous smirk. Oh, he was going to have fun with this one. He could tell already.

 

.o0o.

 

   Despite running through all his databases of who it could be who had developed powers, no powerful individuals had abruptly pulled out of their prior engagements and none of the local labs had had any suspicious accidents involving gamma rays or radioactive animals, which was a bit unusual. Most of the time budding superheroes tended to work their way to the top of their field before they ever manifested, but Gabriel shrugged and let it go. He had more important things to worry about than the latest hero’s secret identity, like deciding whether it would be more dramatic to use nets or an illusionary maze for his dastardly trap.

 

   He regretted that later, when he was stuck gawping at the tiny wriggling bundle trapped in his net. But how could he have known that apparently, the superheroes were now recruiting toddlers?

 

   “Lemme go! Lemme go!”

 

   Stupefied, Gabriel cut him down. The boy (and he was only a boy too, shorter than him and skinny as a rake,) worked his way out of the entangling strands and jumped back to his feet, a scowl visible even under the mask.

 

   “You know, I don’t know what would be worse, if there’s an actual superhero out there using kids as distractions, or if they somehow let ten year olds try to take me on.”

 

   Angry hazel eyes glared out at him. “I’m not ten! I’m twelve!”

 

   Gabriel laughed, then scratched his head, bemused, trying to figure out what to do. “Yeah, kiddo, those two years make it so much better.”

 

   The boy raised his head cockily, looking him up and down with an assessing eye. “You’re Loki, right? I could take you on.”

 

   Gabriel snorted. “Dream on, kid. So do I drop you back with your parents or what? Where do you live? ‘Cos I’m not gonna beat up a-”

 

   The boy’s eyes glowed a sudden blinding gold and a crenelated ring of light haloed his forehead, then a beam of crackling energy caught Gabriel in the chest and slammed him backwards into the wall. It was like being hit by a train (not something that Gabriel was keen to repeat after that time with Thunderguy), only without the screaming or the fireballs.

 

   “Son of a bitch!” He wheezed, pushing bits of rubble off himself. “What the fuck was that?” The sneaky kid had caught him monologuing!

 

   The said sneaky kid looked down at him solemnly. “I don’t think you should say that. Our teachers said that it’s a naughty word.”

 

   Gabriel was silent for a second, mouth open in disbelief. He’d been outsmarted by a kindergartner.

 

   The boy nodded at him awkwardly, then walked to the edge of the roof and hopped off into empty space. Gabriel yelped in surprise and ran to the edge, only to sag with a little relief as he saw the kid soaring off into the rapidly fading light.

 

   “Telekinetics,” Gabriel grumbled to himself as he snapped his way off the roof to outside his favourite bar. He hadn’t even managed to get the last word in.

 

.o0o.

 

   “Look at that!” He exclaimed to Kryptonite, waving his beer at the screen in disgust, “Look at them all, waving him on! Don’t they know that kid is fucking _twelve years old_? Twenty is fine, eighteen would be just about alright, but he hasn’t even had his first growth spurt yet! This shit is dangerous, and they’re pretending that dressing a tiny kid in a spangly outfit and pushing him towards the bad guys is an okay thing to do?”

 

   Kryptonite rolled onto his back and begged for belly rubs, wriggling ecstatically when Gabriel gave in with a sigh.

 

   He shook his head and took another gulp of his beer as his other hand kept skritching, much to Kryptonite’s delight. “They’re calling him the Boy King on the news feeds, but I looked him up. Apparently he’s just some boy called Sam Winchester. I almost feel sorry for the kid, this is going to screw up his childhood so bad.”

 

   For some reason, thoughts of the child superhero preyed on his mind all evening, and even when he was tucked into his enormous, comfortable (possibly excessive) bed he found that he couldn’t stop thinking about it. He sat up, annoyed with himself. He was a villain damn it. He needed to pull himself together. The kid wasn’t his problem, and he wasn’t his responsibility. He should leave well alone.

 

.o0o.

 

   The next day after Sam’s first run-in with the terrifying trickster Loki, the history teacher at Sam’s school mysteriously vanished. Initially, everyone was confused and a little afraid, but then the police searched his belongings for clues to his disappearance and found a variety of illegal vulgar images as well as a thriving drugs distribution centre, so by the time the investigation was finished nobody was too sad that he was gone.

 

   The job was opened up to anyone who could fill in at such short notice, and the position was taken by a short man with a sharp sense of humour and piercing golden eyes. Sam liked Professor Novak from the start, he was a good teacher and his classes were easily more interesting than his predecessor, so Sam was pleased when he got offered a full time position after a few months.

 

   To Sam’s surprise, he was finding balancing the whole superhero business with his regular life surprisingly easy; it was as though his adversaries knew exactly when all his exams were. Mostly, he dealt with Loki, which usually wasn’t too bad. He might rob a few banks (the ones ripping people off) and he might deface a few museum paintings (he gave them all moustaches and blackened teeth). The worst that Loki had ever done was kill isolated people, and even though the press had raged about the cases, it usually turned up post-mortem that there had been something hidden about those individuals. Like the dead serial killer who had evaded capture by heading up his own police investigation, or the estate agent running the human trafficking ring. Which made it kind of difficult for Sam to make up his mind about the guy, whether or not the press made him out to be a villain, because looking at Loki made Sam see the things he was doing in uncomfortable shades of grey.

 

   It didn’t help that the worst that Loki ever did to him was stick him in a trap while he worked for a few hours until he escaped, or dangle him upside down over the bay that one time. He never underestimated Sam again, but when they were actually using their powers on one another it seemed a lot more like friendly sparring than intended harm. Half of Sam was a little insulted that Gabriel wasn’t treating him like an adult by giving him a proper fight, and often it felt suspiciously like Loki was letting him foil his evil plans. But the other, louder and more sensible half was glad because he didn’t want Dean to find him walking home covered in bruises. It was hard enough hiding what he was up to as it was.

 

.o0o.

 

   “Look, I’m just saying, this isn’t right, Cas!”

 

   Gabriel paced around his lair, phone held against his ear.

 

   “It might have been a while since I belonged to Garrison, but please say those idiots in charge don’t think it’s right to be sending someone into this who hasn’t even gone through high school yet. They’re supposed to protect superheroes, right, handle all the legal shit? Well this right here is what’s illegal. He should be worried about spelling bees, not world domination! No, I don’t care if they say those are orders, don’t the League of Heaven ever worry about how it’s affecting his education? No. Alright, I get it. See you around, Cas.”

 

   Gabriel sighed in frustration and threw the phone onto the couch, going to the freezer to scrounge up dinner. Frozen pizza again tonight, this supervillain gig was sapping all his free time.

 

   “Holy fuck, I am not qualified to deal with this shit. Am I the only sane one here, Kryptonite? Wait, don’t answer that.”

 

   Thankfully, Kryptonite remained silent, ears pricking. Apparently, Gabriel’s sanity was still intact.

 

   Anyway, talking about free time, food and powers, how was Sam faring on that front? Gabriel had noticed that Sam was getting thinner, not noticeably to normal eyes, but enough for his supernaturally sharp ones to tell the difference. It might have just been him starting to grow, and Gabriel had no doubt that Sam was headed for a massive growth spurt one of these days, but there was no way his arms should have been that thin, no matter if the kid was about to go beanpole.

 

   He sighed, then chucked the frozen pizza into the oven and transported himself to the other side of town close to where he knew Sam lived with a snap of his fingers. Was this his life now? He’d never signed up for this shit, responsibility wasn’t his thing, hence leaving The Garrison and his old title of Archangel in the dust, but here he was, playing concerned parent.

 

   He shielded himself and walked through the darkened streets, frowning around him. This wasn’t the nicest neighbourhood to grow up in, he knew, he had set a zoo lion on some guy killing off the local cats in inventive and horrible ways just last week.

 

   He was even more dismayed when he finally reached the house where his young tormentor was apparently living. It was ramshackle, no car in the drive, only two life signs inside. In a second he confirmed that they were Sam and his slightly older brother Dean. Gabriel opened the door quietly, closing it carefully so that it wouldn’t creak, and walked through the living room into the kitchen, wrinkling his nose at the smell of stale alcohol.

 

   He opened the cupboards and was greeted with a whole lot of nothing. Searching proved that there was no food in the house apart from a battered box of mac’n’cheese and a packet of marshmallows. Oh, and a whole lot of hard spirits, which was just as well because Gabriel was going to need a drink after this. Why the hell hadn’t child services picked this up? Children starving in their own homes was the sort of thing they were meant to prevent, right? He had known from school records and research that Sam and his brother lived with their father, who Gabriel was dying to rip a new one after this, because it was fairly obvious that 16-year-old Deano had had to step up to be the man of the house before he even had hair on his balls.

 

   He took a deep swig of Jack Daniels and tried to think. If he was going to work this out properly, this was going to need some consideration.

 

.o0o.

 

   Sam woke the next morning to find that their father had been arrested for being drunk and disorderly. He would have been more upset about it if he had seen his dad sober more than twice in the last month, but what he was upset about was the social worker who came to their house and proclaimed it unfit to live in.

 

   He was definitely worried about being split up with Dean, but half way through the police turning up and a doctor and the social worker looking grimly at the dark bruise where dad had backhanded Dean last week when he had been particularly drunk, Mr Novak had shown up.

 

   Things seemed to go more smoothly after that and Mr Novak seemed to know what he was doing, even if the rest of the adults looked a little confused, as though they weren’t entirely sure why they were taking orders from a history teacher. But Mr Novak kept smiling, even when Dean started to get suspicious, and slipped Sam a lollipop with a wink.

 

   “Call me Gabriel, seeing as I’m now your legal guardian. Don’t you worry, kid, I know just where you can go!”

 

   It turned out that Mr Novak had a cousin called Anna who lived nearby who was thrilled to have two teens moving in. Dean had taken one look at her and blushed and gone quiet and a little shy, but not nearly as blushy and quiet as when Anna’s younger brother Castiel turned up later wearing a long trenchcoat and the worst case of bedhead known to man.

 

   Dean had stopped putting up a fuss at that point, which Sam noted to tease him about later, but Sam had read up on the social system as soon as he had been old enough to realise that beating up your kids and drinking yourself to sleep was not normal paternal behaviour. If he hadn’t been worried about losing Dean, he would have left years ago. But the law just didn’t work like that. So he knew all of the protocols that had been broken that day, and he remembered the blank, vaguely confused look on the social worker’s face, and as he lay on his new soft mattress in his new warm room with a belly full of food, he began to think.

 

.o0o.

 

   As much as Gabriel moaned about his new job babysitting the boy king, he kept having to push down the growing realisation that he’d not been this happy in years. He _liked_ Sam, the kid had great banter while they were wearing their masks and he was a diligent student and an engaging person for his age. Gabriel even enjoyed teaching history, because unlike a lot of history teachers, he had been around for a good stretch of it (both a perk and a disadvantage of his near immortality). Sam seemed happy at Anna’s, and he made it past his thirteenth birthday much healthier now that he was actually eating vegetables. His grades were good, and although Gabriel wasn’t conducting as many amusing pranks as he could have been, he was willing to trade that for turning up for Sunday dinner every fortnight with dessert.

 

   What with his inactivity, though, he should have figured on some other supervillain moving in on his patch. He was one of the oldest players out there, and most of the younger villains would have respected that, but not The Devil. Gabriel had known him back when they were in The Garrison together, and he was a lot more twisted than he had been back then, but no less powerful.

 

   Which was how he found himself gaping down at the stake sticking out of his stomach on with The Devil grinning in front of him.

 

   “You’ve gotten old, Loki. I would never have gotten that one past you before.” He sneered as Gabriel fell to his knees. “It must be all the fraternizing with humans. That’s your problem; you always concentrate on the little stuff, no care for the bigger picture. It’s the supers you need to concern yourself with, not those little insects underneath our fee-”

 

   His monologue was cut off by a beam of sizzling golden light which hit him smack in the chest, throwing him clear off the rooftop with an enraged yell. Looked like Sammy had been getting stronger, it had been a while since he had thrown his lightning at him. There was a sonic boom as The Devil shot away out of the city, probably to lick his wounds after the unexpected encounter. After all, superheroes didn’t usually involve themselves in squabbles over supervillain territories.

 

   In Gabriel’s wavering vision, Sam appeared, eyes glowing like enraged coals, the jagged corona of light crowning his forehead, and he gasped in relief.

 

   Sam strode up to him, and without hesitating, wrapped both small hands around the wood of the stake and tugged. Gabriel might have screamed as the stake pulled out, but after that he heaved deep relieved breaths as the wounds quickly healed over.

 

   “Thanks, kid,” he gasped as soon as he had the air, “Does that mean I have to lay off the bank robberies for a while?”

 

   Sam had grinned back at him. “Yeah, until next week. You still have an evil regime to keep up.”

 

   Gabriel laughed, a real laugh not just his usual cackle, then winced as the splinters in his chest pulled. Those were going to be a bitch to pull out later.

 

   “Well, isn’t it past your bedtime, kid?”

 

   He smirked and reached out to ruffle Sam’s hair now that the halo had died away, and Sam grumbled as he swatted him away and brushed it flat again.

 

   “Shouldn’t you be napping, old man?”

 

   Gabriel laughed again before pretending to disappear in a dramatic shower of sparks. He actually followed Sam home, making sure he got there safely and was tucked into bed before Gabriel left.

 

.o0o.

 

   After the night Sam saved Loki’s life, things changed again between them. They fought less and less, and had moral debates while sitting on rooftops a lot more. Sam highly disapproved of Gabriel’s occasional killings, but actually had some pretty good suggestions on how to deal with the mugger who kept praying on women in darkened allies. They both watched from on high and giggled as the man was thoroughly beaten up by a ninety year old grandmother who suddenly possessed all the martial arts skill of a black belt karate instructor.

 

   By the time murmurings of a disturbance in the super community in the next city along reached them, Sam’s fourteenth birthday had rolled around. Lucifer was gathering more followers, a cult and a rag-tag group of other super villains, and was planning to take on their small city to add to his collection.

 

   The Garrison, being the ruling elite of the superheroes in their city, obviously weren’t thrilled with the news. It took time out of their daily routines and secret identities to constantly patrol the city limits, and Sam had tests coming up. He couldn’t do everything, he had to revise. The solution came from an unusual place when Loki, his smirking mask firmly covering his face, had offered to take on his patrols for him when he found him crying from the stress on top of a building.

 

   “What? It’s not like this isn’t my city too,” he’d pointed out, holding out a tissue as Sam breathed shakily to calm his sniffles. “Plus I’m not exactly fond of this Devil guy. You remember when he staked me, right? The others will never notice that it’s not you doing the rounds, trust me, they’re not that bright.”

 

   Sam still got the impression that Loki would rather not have gotten involved in this if it was at all possible, but he wasn’t going to complain now that he actually had time to shower without worrying he might be putting the city in danger. Loki might technically be one of the bad guys, but that didn’t mean he was _bad_.

 

   When The Devil came for Sam, he was still in school. In fact, he was right in the middle of his maths exam, so Sam was almost glad about the distraction as the class began screaming as the roof started to cave in. At least he’d have a chance to redo question thirteen if he didn’t die today, and if he did die, well then. No more question thirteen.

 

   With that bolstering thought, Sam mentally gripped the rubble coming down on his classmates and hovered it harmlessly to let it drop outside. The gym had needed a new roof forever, anyway. He took a moment to be thankful that he had put his suit on under his clothes that morning before shredding them and pulling his mask on, feeling his eyes starting to glow as he levitated his way out of the wrecked gymnasium. The Devil was above him, laughing maniacally as The Seraph winged his way towards them from across the city to back Sam up, feathers gleaming black and iridescent blue under the bright midday sun. The Devil grinned and made a batting motion, and the other superhero was smacked out of the air like he had been hit with a giant fly swatter.

 

   Sam scowled, firing the strongest blast of power he could at him, but this time, to his horror, instead of scouring over The Devil like a vertical lightning storm, the light bounced off some sort of shield and the beam rebounded towards the wreaked school. More screams drifted up as another section of roof caved in, and Sam was only just in time to stop his maths teacher from being flattened. Privately, Sam reckoned that should have earned him at least an A.

 

   While he was distracted The Devil pointed one long finger at him, grinning gleefully, and he felt himself smashed into the floor with a painful thump, all the wind knocked out of him, pinned against the concrete

 

   He was still trying desperately to figure out what to do around the fear and the pain in his ribs and the spinning in his skull, and The Devil was laughing insanely as he readied himself for the next strike, when Loki appeared with a pop in the air between them, just in time to catch The Devil’s crackling bolt of deadly ice on his outstretched hand.

 

   For a second his body was lit up with pure, white light, then Sam watched with amazement as Loki burst into flames, his costume burning to nothing, three pairs of wings made of light sweeping out from his back to beat the air, blazing armour coating every inch of him. The fire flowed out along his arm and burst from his palm with a shriek, obliterating the ice instantly. Sam had time to see the stunned look on The Devil’s face just before the fire consumed him in the inferno, not leaving so much as a single singed scrap of fabric.

 

   Slowly, the flames died down, the wings remaining as Loki glided down to land among the ruins, then folding away with a hiss of steam. Sam caught sight of his face, his very familiar face, as he came striding towards him, every line of his body rigid with tension.

 

   “Are you alright? Are you hurt? What the hell did you think you were doing, kid? You could have been killed! Next time, you call for backup, you hear me?”

 

   Sam smirked. “Sure thing, _mom_. And, Gabriel? You might wanna put on a mask or something, I can feel the cops coming.”

 

   Gabriel froze, startled and guilty, as though he hadn’t realised his mask had burnt away until right that second.

 

   “Um, any chance that you’ll fall for it if I tell you that I’m, like, a clone? Or wearing some kind of creepy Gabriel suit?”

 

   Sam grinned. “Nope.”

 

   Gabriel seemed to deflate a little, narrowing his eyes at Sam suspiciously. “You knew all along, didn’t you?”

 

   Sam shrugged. “I suspected.”

 

   Gabriel took a moment to process that, then was belligerently annoyed. “You little shit! Do you know how many times I had to put off history tests because you had a late night? Are you aware of the number of times I had to sneak out early after family dinners, only to find you waiting for me? You could have saved me so much stress, and you said nothing!”

 

   “The cops are nearly here,” Sam prompted, not even trying to hide his grin.

 

   “Don’t think you’ve gotten out of this conversation, young man!” Gabriel said as he stepped away. “I’ll see you at home!”

 

   Then, in his usual puff of glitter (what could he say, he was still a drama queen), he was gone.

 

.o0o.

 

   “So, you were The Archangel, huh? But I thought that he was around a hundred years ago.” Sam kicked his feet over the edge of the building, looking up into the star spangled velvet sky above them, washed slightly orange by the city lights.

 

   Gabriel snorted. “Yeah, more like two hundred years ago. The longevity is pretty common in supers, you’ve probably got it too.” And just wait until your family and friends start to leave you behind and grow old without you, he wanted to say as well, but that was probably a little heavy to dump on the kid tonight. He was fourteen. And Gabriel was planning on sticking around so that he would never have to find out just how lonely immortality could be.

 

   “I played the good guy for a while back then, tried the whole superhero thing. Then I realised that I couldn’t actually stop the monsters on the ‘good’ side, especially the monsters who happened to be human. Plus, there was some reorganisation of the Garrison, and after the fighting I couldn’t work under those pricks who run it now. So, I quit that gig, tried something new. It was fun at first. I guess I might have had a bit too much fun with it at times, too. But it was all working fine until you came along.” He scowled at Sam fondly, and Sam gave his very best shit eating grin and tucked himself along Gabriel’s side, a line of just-hotter-than-body heat against the chill of the night air. Gabriel absently wrapped an arm around his skinny shoulders.

 

   “So, what do you think?” he asked quietly. “I’ve been wondering if it’s time for Loki to retire. I think I could be The Archangel again, I’m pretty sure I even have the old costume somewhere in the back of my wardrobe.”

 

   Sam gave him a long, considering look, and Gabriel could almost see his brain ticking over behind those hazel irises. “No,” he said slowly, “I think you’re good as Loki. I mean, it’s up to you, if you want to be The Archangel again then go for it. But you always seemed… I dunno, more natural as Loki? You chose to be him after all, you made him for yourself. And like you said, there are things you can’t do as a superhero, like everyone expects that doing the right thing is always going to be obvious and simple, and that everything else is wrong.  I think we need someone like you, to balance the books, to do what we need to do in the more… morally dubious areas. We could keep working together, maybe pretend to fight occasionally for the press, but I think our city’s safer with you as Loki. And if anyone tries to threaten it, you can always bring out The Archangel again.”

 

   He turned to Gabriel with a grin. “Plus, you wouldn’t get to be my history teacher anymore if you went back to heroing full time, and I want an A on my history test, at least.”

 

   Gabriel tipped back is head and roared with laughter and relief, and heard Sam snickering beside him. He squeezed him in the sideways approximation of a hug and conjured a burst of fireworks, showering sparks over the sleeping city.

 

   “Never change, kid. Never change.”

 


End file.
